INTRODUCING HIS previous collection of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Haruki Murakami wrote that “if writing novels is like planting a forest, then writing short stories is more like planting a garden. The two processes complement each other, creating a complex landscape that I treasure.”

I wonder how he characterises his novellas; something in between a forest and a garden — a municipal park or an adventure playground, perhaps?

Murakami’s career began in 1979 with two novellas, Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973. Since then he has alternated between short stories and novels, some long and broad, such as The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, others short and intense, such as Sputnik Sweetheart. With After Dark he has gone back to the novella to experiment.

The action occurs between 11.56pm and 6.52am in an “amusement district” of Tokyo that is dangerous at night: “Between the time the last train leaves and the first train arrives, the place changes: it’s not the same as in daytime.”

All the characters are awake, keeping one kind of forlorn vigil or another, except for the beautiful Eri Asai, and her sleep is unnatural: “Even in the profoundest somnolence, people do not tread so deeply into the realm of sleep. They do not attain such a total surrender of consciousness.”

Eri Asai’s younger sister, Mari, is reading in a café, trying but failing to escape her family’s typecasting. She has brains while Eri has beauty. Mari is 19, proficient in Chinese, and hopes to become a freelance translator, suiting her nocturnal habits.

An acquaintance of both sisters enters with his trombone, en route to an all-night rehearsal. Soon he will have to give up music to concentrate on law, but for now he is happy to sacrifice sleep to his jazz band. Mari can’t remember his name. He is unconcerned: “I don’t mind if you forget my name. It is about as ordinary as a name can be. Even I feel like forgetting it sometimes. It’s not that easy, though, to forget your own name.” He is Takahashi, and from this nonchalant beginning a cool companionship develops through the night between him and Mari.

The catalyst is a violent beating in a nearby “love hotel”, named Alphaville after the Godard film. Takahashi knows the manager, has helped her with the computer system that allows visitors to select their room, choose to pay by the hour or overnight, and collect their key without any embarrassing interaction with another human being.

The manager — a former professional wrestler with the delicate name Kaoru — has a problem. In one of the rooms is a badly beaten-up Chinese prostitute, left naked, bloodied and distraught by an absconding customer. Takahashi tells Kaoru to fetch Mari; she will be able to interpret, insofar as interpretation is needed.

“The guy was strong, but he’s obviously a total amateur when it comes to beating somebody up,” Kaoru remarks, matching words to her brutal world. Mari feels stirrings of friendship with the Chinese girl who is her own age, but these are quashed by a gruff man on a “tough looking Honda sports bike” who picks up the prostitute and disappears into the night.

At 3.42am Mari and Takahashi go to a park to discuss the Chinese girl and the unnaturally sleeping Eri. “Why don’t you look at it this way?" Takahashi suggests. “Say your sister is in some other Alphaville kind of place — I don't know where — and somebody is subjecting her to meaningless violence. She’s raising wordless screams and bleeding invisible blood.”

Bizarre as it is, this idea prompts intimacy between the two young people puzzling on the swings over the ways people hurt themselves and one another.

Murakami weaves the pattern of criss-crossing night lives with a series of reflections on perspective in After Dark. Twice people look in mirrors, walk away, and leave their reflection behind. He plays with television and surveillance cameras. He plays too with narrative voice, employing the complicit “we” instead of an anonymous third person: “Run! We shout to her. On impulse we forget the rule that requires us to maintain our neutrality. Our voice doesn’t reach her, needless to say, but Eri perceives the danger on her own.”

An abandoned mobile phone keeps ringing with the message: “You might forget what you did, but we will never forget.”

Thanks to his translators (this time Jay Rubin) Murakami has become a bestselling writer in the Anglophone world. After Dark reminds us of the risks, innovation and disquiet that underpin his success. It is not an easy book, nor is it meant to be. In Murakami’s fictional world forests are imposing, gardens strange and playgrounds surprisingly serious places.

After Dark by Haruki Murakami, translated by Jay Rubin

Harvill Secker, £14.99; 208pp

Buy the book here for the offer price of £13.49 (free p&p)

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